Tales of Neveryon, by, Samuel R. Delany: **7/8

I had the unfortunate experience of reading this book in two segments, because I left it in Miami while visiting my parents on vacation. They were kind enough to mail it to me so I didn't have to wait months before I continued, but it was still a couple of weeks. I read something else in the meantime to take my mind off of my mistake, but I wasn't happy about it.

If there's any saving grace about my screw-up, it's the fact that Delany's book is divided into five separate tales that could potentially be read individually, though there's a great deal of connection between them. All five stories exist in the same world and occur sequentially (some time elapsed), with several of the characters appearing in multiple tales. And I don't know if any of them could really stand on their own. There's development from story to story, and they work together to create a single picture of an ancient world, a pre-Greek civilization of sorts. There's an appendix at the back of the book that talks about this discovery of a document called the Culhar', maybe dating from 7000 B.C., that forms the basis of Delany's tale. In this sense it reminded me of Wolfe's Latro in the Mist duology, because that series is essentially historical fiction with elements of the fantastic, and it's based around the writings of Herotodus. Plus Wolfe's story is supposed to be a lost scroll. Delany's isn't presented as if it is a translation of the Culhar', but the implication is obvious.

I hadn't experienced this world before, a place that's grim, gritty, and truly ancient. Delany's characters are so primitive, they feel like they actually could have evolved from animals, and that some of them might still be closer to animals in instinct than the civilized and modern people of most fantasy. The book is somewhat hard to get into, not because the writing is so tough, but rather because Delany just drops the reader right in the middle of everything at the beginning of each of the five stories. Furthermore, the rules in this world are different than the rules in most fantasies, and Delany is very careful about the way he reveals his information. This discovery process is much of the fun in the reading, though my experience was hampered by the two separate phases - I forgot some of the things I'd discovered. But so the reading wasn't too easy for the first while, though as I began to get a sense of the world I did much better. By the end I felt I had a pretty good sense of what Delany was going for, and I'd like to read more in this series.

There are four Neveryon books in total, and I'll certainly go on to number two at some point. In fact, when I first thought to read one of Delany's books, I was trying to decide between the Neveryon books and Dhalgren. I decided on Dhalgren mostly because the reprints of the Neveryon books together would tally more than $65, while Dhalgren, despite a similar number of pages as the whole Neveryon series, cost only $20, and I figured I didn't want to jump into a four book series that might cost me that much money without knowing something about the author first. Now I would feel confident spending that kind of money and time on these books, though I'll probably just look for the old paperbacks anyway. More importantly, there isn't much of a story, so I can't imagine there's a hugely important connection to be missed if significant time passes between readings. I certainly don't feel like I'm missing out by not continuing right away; I just want to.
(Winter 2003-4)

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